Heroic Grigory Pasko Rips Putin a New One

Writing on Robert Amsterdam’s blog, hero journalist Grigori Pasko (pictured, left) rips Putin a new one by comparing him to Russia’s prior leadership and exposing him as a fraud:

On 8 February of this year, at a conference at the University of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation (MGIMO) timed to coincide with the 125th anniversary of the birth of US president Franklin Roosevelt, deputy head of the Kremlin administration Vladislav Surkov drew a direct parallel between the activities of Roosevelt and Putin. “Just like Roosevelt in his time, Putin today is forced, and required, to strengthen administrative management and use the potential of the presidential power to a maximum degree for the sake of overcoming a crisis”, said he.

Comparing Putin with some historical personage has long ago become a tradition for all manner of officials and obsequious journalists. Only once did I hear another kind of comparison, from a very famous Russian stage and screen actor – he compared Putin with a white moth.

Surkov’s speech inspired me to find historical parallels on the theme “Putin and someone else”. Here’s what I came up with.

And so, we have Putin. A poor, forgotten C-student from the hinterlands outside Leningrad. A person with a huge inferiority complex. Exceedingly vindictive; never forgives or forgets. Like any dependent person, he is devoted to his master to the point of subsuming his entire self to this devotion. And his master is the KGB system.

Comparisons with Peter the Great simply don’t hold any water whatsoever: Putin absolutely can not be compared with the emperor on any count – not in brains, not in courage, not even in height. Peter pulled Russia, out of the feudal backwoods of historical non-existence. Putin is stubbornly returning Russia back to socialism.

The best example for comparison (and even this is a pretty lame comparison, inasmuch as Putin is such a characterless personality that you really can’t compare him with anybody) would be the emperor Nicholas I.

The historian M. Rakhmatullin (“Nauka i zhizn” No. 2/2002) writes that Nicholas I “was doomed to take on the role of ‘strangler of the revolution’.”

Nobody doomed Putin: he chose for himself the role of strangler of Russia’s young democracy – as deformed as it was in some respects, like some “ugly duckling”. The way he took care of the free press was absolutely brilliant (from the point of view of a thick-headed martinet). Putin was lucky in that there wasn’t that much of a free press to begin with. Now nearly all the press sings Putin’s praises. And it seems that Putin himself likes this a lot. When he is being praised, he only smiles shyly, like the little gay thief Alkhen in Ilf and Petrov’s novel “The Twelve Chairs”.

Following in Nicholas I’s footsteps, Putin could also say that he too has “cleansed the fatherland of the effects of the infection that was lurking so much in its midst.” By “infection”, Putin has no doubt often understood the oligarchs in general, but he has gotten rid of only a few in particular. Why these specific ones? Because one had brought him to power (and tyrants have always, in all times and ages, gotten rid of those who had brought them to power). The second considered himself no stupider than Putin and didn’t hide this. The third dared to fund the opposition. Dozens of other oligarchs are flourishing, plundering Russia clean, and don’t disturb Putin. And he doesn’t disturb them. It is possible that by “infection” Putin may have meant the human rights community, opponents of that criminal organization known as the KGB, independent journalists, environmentalists, and intelligent, honest, and normal people in general? In this case, he has certainly succeeded if not in cleansing the fatherland of them, then at least in forcing them to either go hide in their niches or fight for their very existence.

Nicholas is famous for the fact that in 1825, he created the Third Department of the Special Chancellery, with Benckendorf as its head. Nobody in Russia is talking about how the infamous Fifth Administration of the KGB has renewed its criminal activities in full force. But it is enough that one of the prominent suppressors of dissidents, the KGB chief for Leningrad City and Oblast, the initiator of the “Nikitin affair”, general Cherkesov, is now one of the main leadership officials of Putin’s Russia. In principle, all of today’s KGB (or, as they have named it, the FSB) is one sheer Fifth Administration. They are supposedly fighting terrorism, but in the meantime all of Russia is convinced that it is the KBG and not anyone else that is bombing apartment houses. They are supposedly catching spies, although the whole world including all of Russia is convinced that there isn’t a single real spy among these. For this reason, the main objective of the existnec of the KGB is obvious – to protect the regime and prevent any attempts to change the totalitarian order under which power in the country belongs entirely to the KGB. Putin is merely the placeman for this system. Thank goodness he’s not the smartest of placemen. Although even under him, the KGB is present in absolutely all spheres of the life of the country – either in the form of managers-officials from the KGB, or in the form of the multitude of toadies and stoolpigeons (in the words of A. Hertzen – “listening up and listening in” [slushayushchikh i podslushivayushchikh].

As under Nicholas, the chief of the Third Department (in our case, the director of the FSB) “judged all, repealed court decisions, and interfered in everything” with the blessing of the tsar. There are more than enough examples of this today.

Wherein lies the difference? Under Nicholas I, the people looked down with disdain on the “blue uniforms”, and scorned even simple acquaintance with the spawn of this agency. In our time, everybody’s trying to get into the KGB; the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Emergency Situations, Customs, the Army, taxmen, governors, and just about everybody are kowtowing before them!

If the “cast-iron” Censorial Statute was created in 1826, then now even the publication of such a monster isn’t needed: officials and hireling journalists are prepared to oblige the KGB in any which way all by themselves, of their own free will, without any further incentive, as long as today’s system is benevolent towards them. Under Putin, we are seeing the founding of alternative organizations such as the Union of Journalists (the Mediasoyuz) or economically “correct” civic organizations, up to and including the odious Public Chamber. But we’re also seeing the rebirth of old, tried and true groups, such as the Pioneers, the Komsomol, and voluntary people’s guards attached to the police. And then there are the “innovations” with an openly fascist character – “Going together” and “Nashi”.

Like it was under Nicholas, under Putin people have begun to bray about “getting back to the sources” and about the “Russian spirit”. Neo-fascists are being encouraged, albeit not openly. The rah-rah patriots are ready to burn books that are, in their opinion, bad. Xenophonia and spy mania are on the rise, as manifestations of the “defense of Russia” from enemies who are everywhere and all around. Inasmuch there is practically no economy at all, the you can always cast the blame on spies and “democraps” [der’mokraty].

Russia under Putin is counterposing itself against Europe more and more. But this, like so much else, is taking place in a two-faced manner. On the one hand, Russia is worming its way into Europe, into the EEC, the IMF, the WTO, NATO. On the other hand, it is criticizing these institutions every which way through the mouths of compliant journalists.

If Putin has ever read Karamzin (by the way, we were never told about how reactionary the thought of this historian was), he would no doubt like Karamzin’s words about how in Russia, the sovereign is “living law”: he shows mercy on the good, and puts the evil to death. At the same time, Putin will be quick to add that he doesn’t meddle in the affairs of the courts, although even an idiot can see that when you have supine courts grovelling on their bellies, it is enough for the president to say nothing at all or to mutter something obscure.

Judicial reform deserves a separate discussion. Under Nicholas I, as we know, the person in charge of judicial reform was the former governor-general of Siberia, Mikhail Speransky. A man of exceptional intelligence. And progressive, in contrast to Karamzin. He proposed, for example, making the judicial power elected. The executive power would merely oversee the forms of judicial proceedings. And the executive power itself would have to be accountable to the legislative power.

And what do we have now under Putin? Even Putin’s comrade in arms Kozak, responsible for judicial reform, has declared that the judicial system has broken down. Lots of noise, but it’s all just hot air. Cosmetic changes to the status of judges and to the criminal-procedure and criminal codes. And that’s it. Nothing substantive. We don’t have a judicial power; all we have is cowardly judges who adopt their decisions dependently on the supreme power – the KGB and the governors. The Russian courts have even acquired a new label – Basmanny. The executive power doesn’t execute laws, the legislative power is essentially subordinate to the executive. The “aggressively obedient” majority in the State Duma, to use a term coined by Yuri Afanasiev, is a quagmire in which common sense drowns. The new Duma will no doubt confirm this many a time yet.

The electoral system is nothing short of a parody of democracy. Only those who are advantageous for the power “win”. This is proven by the most recent State Duma elections. We needn’t expect any better from the upcoming elections.

Under Nicholas I, there were departmental courts – military, naval, mining, railway, and so forth. We’ve got them under Putin too – military courts.

Military courts are a true grimace of totalitarianism, a clear rudiment on the way to judicial independence.

Just like the toughening of entry and exit into and out of Russia. Quietly, without any fanfare, Putin has brought back a concept some thought was gone forever: nevyezdnoy [a person prohibited from foreign travel—Trans.] Scientists are now not allowed to travel abroad – in the opinion of the KGB, they are potential spies. For all the rest, like in the times of Nicholas I, it has become harded to get a foreign-travel passport. Like under the tsar, under the communists the only way to get permission to obtain a foreign-travel passport is through the KGB. So far, thank goodness, travel abroad has not been prohibited. But who can say for sure that this will always be so? And as concerns entry into Russia, wel, last year, former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, now an opponent of Putin’s, actually had a problem entering his own country. And dozens of foreign journalists have had and continue to have problems when they are not granted entry visas into Russia.

Reading the papers or watching TV, you sometimes hear the thought: we have nothing to learn from beyond the border. A popular contemporary comedian has become famous for his phrase about the Americans: “Boy are they dense!” His routines often propagandize a thought that was already being voiced by Nicholas I: “Our imperfection is in many ways better than their perfection”.

The issue of supporting the domestic producer is constantly being massaged. The government is acting particularly absurdly and awkwardly on the automobile market. Domestic coffins-on-wheels are being advertised like Rolls-Royces, but the only thing they have in common is the price.

By the way, I’ve noticed the following subtlety: if the mass media want to praise something in Russia, they mention the name of the president, just like they used to mention Stalin and Brezhnev in their day. And if they need to berate, then they say: “The government of so-and-so (Kasyanov, Fradkov)…Zurabov’s Ministry…Chubais’s Agency…”. But what do premiers and officials have to do with anything, if the head of the executive power is the president?

Under Nicholas I, in order to avoid “intellectual ferment”, they closed down publications of progressive orientation: A. Delvig’s “Literaturnaya gazeta”, N. Polevoy’s “Moskovsky telegraph”, and N. Nadezhdin’s “Telescope”.

Under Putin, we’ve had the closure of the magazine “Itogi”, the newspaper “Segodnya”, and the television channels NTV and TV-6… Putin never does anything blatantly. He acts under the guise of observing legality. The strangulation of freedom of speech is taking place under the cover of the phrase “dispute among economic agents”.

One can confidently say about Putin, and about Nicholas I for that matter, that he, not possessing economic knowledge, did not particularly interfered in the economic management of the state. By the way, under Putin, it seems that nobody is particularly interfering in the economic management of the state. Other than the oligarchs, who are concerned about their own pockets and a cloudless future for their own great-great-grandchildren.

But then political management is something Putin considers his personal turf. Putin himself is praised for the creation of the vertical of power. At the same time, nobody can actually explain what this is and why the hell anybody needs it. The visible result of this vertical – the creation of the “semiboyarshchina” [state of the seven boyars—Trans.] – an additional armada of officials in the person of the staffs of the plenipotentiary representatives of Putin in the newly created seven federal districts. At the same time, the plenipotentiaries interfere with the governors and have a fierce hatred of them – and the feeling is completely mutual. No doubt it was to liquidate this feud that it was decided to no longer elect governors, but to appoint them.

Like Nicholas I, Putin expresses a commitment to a mighty centralized administrative apparat. To this day, nobody knows for sure what the central Putinite administrative apparat, and in particular the president’s administration, consists of. The know-how of today’s power is in the creation of a multitude of funds and foundations – economic, political, to support the KGB and veterans of the KGB. Nobody stops to think whose money all these hundreds of funds exist on. But then foreign grant-giving foundations are living in expectation of unpleasant changes and the total liquidation of their activities in Russia.

But when we take a look at the militarization of the apparatus of state, Putin leaves Nicholas I behind in the dust. Under the emperor, only three out of 13 ministires had civilian ranks. Today, it’s the same thing. Plus seven generals in the rank of plenipotentiary representatives (the only exception/misunderstanding being in the person of Kiriyenko). Under Putin, the quantity of “power structures” [military and paramilitary government agencies—Trans.] has increased to twenty – we didn’t have such a thing under Stalin or under Brezhnev. It has gotten to the point where at the parade of Victory in May 2002 along Red Square, we watched as a column marched by of the new mighty military organization – the ministry for emergency situations. According to certain assessments,the numerical composition of these “power structures” comprises in excess of 6 million persons. The uniform, the money, the privileges, and the power – this is what attracts young people into these structures.

Liberally paraphrasing S.M. Solovyov, we can say that under Putin, the “military person” (perferably from the KGB), like a stick, as someone not accustomed to reasoning, but to carrying out orders, and capable of teaching others to carry out orders without reasoning, was considered the best, the most capable commander.” The myth that the KGB was the elite of Russian society was already deficient under Stalin. Under Putin, it has acquired a new lease on life only because Putin himself comes from the KGB. However, this myth has absolutely no substance underneath it. Furthermore, a multitude of facts testifies that everything the KGB sets its hands to collapses with a crash, be it running the country and the economy, catching spies, or fighting terrorists.

Like it was under Nicholas I, under Putin, with the accession of KGB men to all posts, ignorance, tyranny, corruption, lies, and hypocrisy have set in everywhere.

Nicholas I spoke of “strict unconditional legality”.

Putin is famous for his phrase about “dictatorship of the law”, under which he was even unable to reach the procurator-general on the telephone in his time. The usual reply of the “man of law” Putin to a question that worries the Western world is “I’m not up on what’s going on there; this is a purely legal question”.

Like Nicholas I, Putin, it seems, is not in a condition to understand, to cite the historian M. Rakhmatullin, that “the movement of true life needs to go not from the top down, but from the bottom up”.

Like Nicholas I, Putin has surrounded himself with people who carry out orders obediently and don’t show any initiative. How can we not, after the manner of the historian, remember the words of the marquis de Custine: “There are no big people in Russia, because there are no independent characters”.

Today, I don’t see a single area of human endeavor in Russia in which lies and double standards, ugliness and indolence, arbitrariness and just plain idiocy do not reign supreme. Those who try to exhibit intellect and honesty or at least a different point of view about what’s going on are constantly and in every way running up against lies, idiocy, and… (see above). In many ways, the existence of such a system has become possible thanks to the personal efforts of comrade Putin.

If Pushkin is our, Russia’s, everything, then Putin is our nothing.

The saddest thing is that Putin is for a long time. Nicholas I, as we know, occupied the throne for 30 years.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Brilliant Anne Applebaum Rips Putin a Second New One

The brilliant Anne Applebaum, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Gulag: A History of the Soviet Concentration Camps, rips the malignant little troll known as “President” Vladimir Putin a new one in a terrific column in the Washington Post. She also asks the most important question that can be asked right now: Why do we continue to allow this pathetic little man to behave this way? How many times must we see the same neo-Soviet actions repeated, and how many people must lose their lives, before we will wake up and realize the nature of the monstrosity we see before us and do something about it?

“I have a difficult time explaining that speech. It doesn’t accord with either the world as we see it nor with the character of our interactions with the Russians.“

– Condoleezza Rice, Feb. 15

Ten days have passed since the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, made a speech in Munich accusing the United States of plunging the planet into “an abyss of permanent conflicts,” of deliberately encouraging the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and (this from a country that regularly blackmails and manipulates its neighbors) of having “overstepped its national borders in every way.” During that time, the American secretary of state–quoted above–has not been alone in expressing surprise. With varying degrees of shock, commentators and politicians have speculated about the significance of Putin’s “new” language, wondering whether it means Russia’s road to democracy has reached a fork, whether Putin was really speaking to his domestic audience or whether the speech heralded some kind of policy change.

In fact, the only thing continually surprising about President Putin is the surprise itself. For we have long known a great deal about Putin, about his biography–his time as a KGB officer in East Germany, his years in the government of St. Petersburg–and about his personal philosophy, too. We have long known, for example, that he is a great admirer of Yuri Andropov, the former Soviet leader best remembered for his belief that “order and discipline,” as defined by the KGB, would revive the weakened Soviet Union of the 1980s. Way back in 1999, Putin went so far as to dedicate a plaque to Andropov in a corner of the Lubyanka, once the headquarters of the KGB as well as its most notorious political prison.

Since then, Putin has not ceased emulating many of the methods of the Andropov-era KGB, including its paranoid suspicion of America. He continues to treat all Western organizations in Russia, whatever their purpose, as “spies and diversionaries.” He has used Russian television–all state-owned or state-influenced–to portray the recent mysterious deaths of his critics, including one by polonium poisoning, as part of a nefarious Western plot to discredit his government. In the wake of the 2004 Beslan school massacre, he hinted that American support for Chechen terrorists was to blame. I myself have heard that claim repeated in Moscow more than once.

Nevertheless, we were surprised, are surprised and apparently always will be surprised by Putin, just as we were surprised by Yeltsin before him and Gorbachev before that. Despite Putin’s background and his well-known views, President Bush from the beginning of his term treated Putin the way all American presidents treat all Russian leaders: as America’s new best friends. Bush, infamously, looked deep into Putin’s eyes, found him to be ” straightforward and trustworthy” and invited him to his ranch.

Not so many years earlier, when President Boris Yeltsin was up for reelection, President Bill Clinton told his main Soviet adviser, Strobe Talbott, that “I want this guy to win so bad it hurts.” Never mind that inside Russia, Yeltsin was already associated with massive theft and economic chaos, or that his regime was perceived internally as corrupt and nepotistic: The American president went out of his way to visit Moscow during the campaign, just to make sure Yeltsin won.

It is, if you think about it, an odd phenomenon. After all, American presidents generally don’t campaign on behalf of their French counterparts or look deep into the eyes of German chancellors in order to divine their true natures. While at times very friendly, neither Clinton nor Bush seems to have felt a mystical connection to British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Yet Russian politicians still seem to make American politicians grow starry-eyed and lose their bearings. Perhaps it’s a secret longing for the glamour of those Cold War summits, for the days when it seemed as if the personal relations between superpower statesmen could ward off the destruction of the entire planet. Or perhaps they put something in the vodka–sorry, mineral water–at those elegant Kremlin lunches.

Either way, it’s time to kick the habit. True, it is perfectly possible that whoever leads Russia after Putin steps down (if Putin steps down) will be a nicer, friendlier person. It is perfectly possible that we will find areas of cooperation with him, just as we sometimes do with Putin. But however friendly and cooperative, however much a “democrat” he appears to be, I hope we’ll avoid the instant professions of eternal friendship. At the very least, we’ll avoid being unpleasantly surprised, yet again, if things turn out otherwise.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s Real Agenda

Douglas Farah of Counterterrorism Blog expands upon Anne Applebaum’s analysis (above) as follows:

Secretary of State Rice seems baffled by Vladimir Putin’s recent speech denouncing the United States in some of the harshest terms possible, as Anne Applebaum eloquently points out in the Washington Post.

But the time for treating Russia like a trustworthy ally in fighting global terror, or having common interests with the United States in Latin America, Africa or Europe has long passed. Only the administration, perhaps still tied by Bush’s peering into Putin’s soul, seems oblivious to what Russia really wants-to reestablish itself as a world power whose interests will often collide directly with the interests of the United States and its allies.

Russia is a sovereign state, and most (with important exceptions) of its clients are also sovereign states, with the right to enter into these international agreements. But it is time to stop pretending Russia’s interests are anything but extremely hostile to combatting Islamist terrorism, stabilizing key regions and ending regional conflicts that pose the real threat of becoming much broader wars.

The first is Russia’s ongoing supply of weapons to Iran and Hezbollah at a time when both are posing direct threats to U.S. interests in several regions, including Iraq and Lebanon. This has been well documented, including senior Israeli officials’ formal protest to Russia over the sale of sophisticated anti-tank weapons that Hezbollah used with great effect in last summer’s war.

This link to Hezbollah, in which Viktor Bout is alleged by U.S. and foreign intelligence officials to be directly involved, has drawn little public comment from U.S. officials.

There are other cases cases much closer to home that have drawn little response from the Bush administration. The Chavez government in Venezuela has spent some $4.3 billion on weapons since 2005, placing it ahead of China ($3.4 billion); Pakistan ($3 billion); and Iran ($1.7 billion), according to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

Most of those weapons come from Russia, including the construction of a Kalashnikov (AK-103) assault rifle factory, combat helicopters, missiles and fighter jets. I recently wrote a paper on it for the International Assessment and Strategy Center.

The sales come as Chavez has gone out of his way to court Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. The two presidents have held at least three face-to-face meetings in the past six months, and address each other as “brother.”

The growing economic ties between the two nations can be seen in the dozens of economic agreements the two leaders have signed in that time, and the mutual support for cutting OPEC’s oil production, which is significant given that the two countries are OPEC’s second and fourth largest oil producers, respectively.

The real impact of Russia’s weapons sales to Venezuela and Iran will be felt in several regions.

Chavez has long had at least tacitly support the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), one of the major drug trafficking organizations in the world. The FARC, when I used to deal with its members in the early 1990s as a Washington Post reporter, retained some vestiges of a true insurrection, whether one agreed with them or not. There was an ideological cohesion.

That has now devolved into an organization with little political agenda beyond making billions of dollars from protecting coca and poppy fields, moving cocaine and heroin and supporting the major cartels. They need weapons, and one can safely assume, I believe, that Chavez’s revolutionary support will extend beyond his own borders.

This risks destabilizing not only Colombia, but the rest of the Andean ridge, from Ecuador through Peru and to Bolivia.

The Chavez-Ahmadinejad axis, with Russian weapons and support, will likely also have a direct impact on supporting the extensive Hezbollah network of money and operatives that flow through Latin America. Iran directly sponsors the group, Russia arms the group and Venezuela offers the friendly ground for operations. Not a pretty picture.

It is hard to imagine Secretary Rice really meaning what she said on Feb. 15: “I have a difficult time explaining that (Putin) speech. It doesn’t accord with either the world as we see it nor with the character of our interactions with the Russians.”

Unfortunately, the speech was a clear articulation of what Russia is doing around the world. Perhaps that is not the world Secretary Rice sees, but it is visible to almost anyone else.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s Real Agenda

Douglas Farah of Counterterrorism Blog expands upon Anne Applebaum’s analysis (above) as follows:

Secretary of State Rice seems baffled by Vladimir Putin’s recent speech denouncing the United States in some of the harshest terms possible, as Anne Applebaum eloquently points out in the Washington Post.

But the time for treating Russia like a trustworthy ally in fighting global terror, or having common interests with the United States in Latin America, Africa or Europe has long passed. Only the administration, perhaps still tied by Bush’s peering into Putin’s soul, seems oblivious to what Russia really wants-to reestablish itself as a world power whose interests will often collide directly with the interests of the United States and its allies.

Russia is a sovereign state, and most (with important exceptions) of its clients are also sovereign states, with the right to enter into these international agreements. But it is time to stop pretending Russia’s interests are anything but extremely hostile to combatting Islamist terrorism, stabilizing key regions and ending regional conflicts that pose the real threat of becoming much broader wars.

The first is Russia’s ongoing supply of weapons to Iran and Hezbollah at a time when both are posing direct threats to U.S. interests in several regions, including Iraq and Lebanon. This has been well documented, including senior Israeli officials’ formal protest to Russia over the sale of sophisticated anti-tank weapons that Hezbollah used with great effect in last summer’s war.

This link to Hezbollah, in which Viktor Bout is alleged by U.S. and foreign intelligence officials to be directly involved, has drawn little public comment from U.S. officials.

There are other cases cases much closer to home that have drawn little response from the Bush administration. The Chavez government in Venezuela has spent some $4.3 billion on weapons since 2005, placing it ahead of China ($3.4 billion); Pakistan ($3 billion); and Iran ($1.7 billion), according to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

Most of those weapons come from Russia, including the construction of a Kalashnikov (AK-103) assault rifle factory, combat helicopters, missiles and fighter jets. I recently wrote a paper on it for the International Assessment and Strategy Center.

The sales come as Chavez has gone out of his way to court Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. The two presidents have held at least three face-to-face meetings in the past six months, and address each other as “brother.”

The growing economic ties between the two nations can be seen in the dozens of economic agreements the two leaders have signed in that time, and the mutual support for cutting OPEC’s oil production, which is significant given that the two countries are OPEC’s second and fourth largest oil producers, respectively.

The real impact of Russia’s weapons sales to Venezuela and Iran will be felt in several regions.

Chavez has long had at least tacitly support the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), one of the major drug trafficking organizations in the world. The FARC, when I used to deal with its members in the early 1990s as a Washington Post reporter, retained some vestiges of a true insurrection, whether one agreed with them or not. There was an ideological cohesion.

That has now devolved into an organization with little political agenda beyond making billions of dollars from protecting coca and poppy fields, moving cocaine and heroin and supporting the major cartels. They need weapons, and one can safely assume, I believe, that Chavez’s revolutionary support will extend beyond his own borders.

This risks destabilizing not only Colombia, but the rest of the Andean ridge, from Ecuador through Peru and to Bolivia.

The Chavez-Ahmadinejad axis, with Russian weapons and support, will likely also have a direct impact on supporting the extensive Hezbollah network of money and operatives that flow through Latin America. Iran directly sponsors the group, Russia arms the group and Venezuela offers the friendly ground for operations. Not a pretty picture.

It is hard to imagine Secretary Rice really meaning what she said on Feb. 15: “I have a difficult time explaining that (Putin) speech. It doesn’t accord with either the world as we see it nor with the character of our interactions with the Russians.”

Unfortunately, the speech was a clear articulation of what Russia is doing around the world. Perhaps that is not the world Secretary Rice sees, but it is visible to almost anyone else.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s Real Agenda

Douglas Farah of Counterterrorism Blog expands upon Anne Applebaum’s analysis (above) as follows:

Secretary of State Rice seems baffled by Vladimir Putin’s recent speech denouncing the United States in some of the harshest terms possible, as Anne Applebaum eloquently points out in the Washington Post.

But the time for treating Russia like a trustworthy ally in fighting global terror, or having common interests with the United States in Latin America, Africa or Europe has long passed. Only the administration, perhaps still tied by Bush’s peering into Putin’s soul, seems oblivious to what Russia really wants-to reestablish itself as a world power whose interests will often collide directly with the interests of the United States and its allies.

Russia is a sovereign state, and most (with important exceptions) of its clients are also sovereign states, with the right to enter into these international agreements. But it is time to stop pretending Russia’s interests are anything but extremely hostile to combatting Islamist terrorism, stabilizing key regions and ending regional conflicts that pose the real threat of becoming much broader wars.

The first is Russia’s ongoing supply of weapons to Iran and Hezbollah at a time when both are posing direct threats to U.S. interests in several regions, including Iraq and Lebanon. This has been well documented, including senior Israeli officials’ formal protest to Russia over the sale of sophisticated anti-tank weapons that Hezbollah used with great effect in last summer’s war.

This link to Hezbollah, in which Viktor Bout is alleged by U.S. and foreign intelligence officials to be directly involved, has drawn little public comment from U.S. officials.

There are other cases cases much closer to home that have drawn little response from the Bush administration. The Chavez government in Venezuela has spent some $4.3 billion on weapons since 2005, placing it ahead of China ($3.4 billion); Pakistan ($3 billion); and Iran ($1.7 billion), according to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

Most of those weapons come from Russia, including the construction of a Kalashnikov (AK-103) assault rifle factory, combat helicopters, missiles and fighter jets. I recently wrote a paper on it for the International Assessment and Strategy Center.

The sales come as Chavez has gone out of his way to court Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. The two presidents have held at least three face-to-face meetings in the past six months, and address each other as “brother.”

The growing economic ties between the two nations can be seen in the dozens of economic agreements the two leaders have signed in that time, and the mutual support for cutting OPEC’s oil production, which is significant given that the two countries are OPEC’s second and fourth largest oil producers, respectively.

The real impact of Russia’s weapons sales to Venezuela and Iran will be felt in several regions.

Chavez has long had at least tacitly support the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), one of the major drug trafficking organizations in the world. The FARC, when I used to deal with its members in the early 1990s as a Washington Post reporter, retained some vestiges of a true insurrection, whether one agreed with them or not. There was an ideological cohesion.

That has now devolved into an organization with little political agenda beyond making billions of dollars from protecting coca and poppy fields, moving cocaine and heroin and supporting the major cartels. They need weapons, and one can safely assume, I believe, that Chavez’s revolutionary support will extend beyond his own borders.

This risks destabilizing not only Colombia, but the rest of the Andean ridge, from Ecuador through Peru and to Bolivia.

The Chavez-Ahmadinejad axis, with Russian weapons and support, will likely also have a direct impact on supporting the extensive Hezbollah network of money and operatives that flow through Latin America. Iran directly sponsors the group, Russia arms the group and Venezuela offers the friendly ground for operations. Not a pretty picture.

It is hard to imagine Secretary Rice really meaning what she said on Feb. 15: “I have a difficult time explaining that (Putin) speech. It doesn’t accord with either the world as we see it nor with the character of our interactions with the Russians.”

Unfortunately, the speech was a clear articulation of what Russia is doing around the world. Perhaps that is not the world Secretary Rice sees, but it is visible to almost anyone else.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s Real Agenda

Douglas Farah of Counterterrorism Blog expands upon Anne Applebaum’s analysis (above) as follows:

Secretary of State Rice seems baffled by Vladimir Putin’s recent speech denouncing the United States in some of the harshest terms possible, as Anne Applebaum eloquently points out in the Washington Post.

But the time for treating Russia like a trustworthy ally in fighting global terror, or having common interests with the United States in Latin America, Africa or Europe has long passed. Only the administration, perhaps still tied by Bush’s peering into Putin’s soul, seems oblivious to what Russia really wants-to reestablish itself as a world power whose interests will often collide directly with the interests of the United States and its allies.

Russia is a sovereign state, and most (with important exceptions) of its clients are also sovereign states, with the right to enter into these international agreements. But it is time to stop pretending Russia’s interests are anything but extremely hostile to combatting Islamist terrorism, stabilizing key regions and ending regional conflicts that pose the real threat of becoming much broader wars.

The first is Russia’s ongoing supply of weapons to Iran and Hezbollah at a time when both are posing direct threats to U.S. interests in several regions, including Iraq and Lebanon. This has been well documented, including senior Israeli officials’ formal protest to Russia over the sale of sophisticated anti-tank weapons that Hezbollah used with great effect in last summer’s war.

This link to Hezbollah, in which Viktor Bout is alleged by U.S. and foreign intelligence officials to be directly involved, has drawn little public comment from U.S. officials.

There are other cases cases much closer to home that have drawn little response from the Bush administration. The Chavez government in Venezuela has spent some $4.3 billion on weapons since 2005, placing it ahead of China ($3.4 billion); Pakistan ($3 billion); and Iran ($1.7 billion), according to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

Most of those weapons come from Russia, including the construction of a Kalashnikov (AK-103) assault rifle factory, combat helicopters, missiles and fighter jets. I recently wrote a paper on it for the International Assessment and Strategy Center.

The sales come as Chavez has gone out of his way to court Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. The two presidents have held at least three face-to-face meetings in the past six months, and address each other as “brother.”

The growing economic ties between the two nations can be seen in the dozens of economic agreements the two leaders have signed in that time, and the mutual support for cutting OPEC’s oil production, which is significant given that the two countries are OPEC’s second and fourth largest oil producers, respectively.

The real impact of Russia’s weapons sales to Venezuela and Iran will be felt in several regions.

Chavez has long had at least tacitly support the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), one of the major drug trafficking organizations in the world. The FARC, when I used to deal with its members in the early 1990s as a Washington Post reporter, retained some vestiges of a true insurrection, whether one agreed with them or not. There was an ideological cohesion.

That has now devolved into an organization with little political agenda beyond making billions of dollars from protecting coca and poppy fields, moving cocaine and heroin and supporting the major cartels. They need weapons, and one can safely assume, I believe, that Chavez’s revolutionary support will extend beyond his own borders.

This risks destabilizing not only Colombia, but the rest of the Andean ridge, from Ecuador through Peru and to Bolivia.

The Chavez-Ahmadinejad axis, with Russian weapons and support, will likely also have a direct impact on supporting the extensive Hezbollah network of money and operatives that flow through Latin America. Iran directly sponsors the group, Russia arms the group and Venezuela offers the friendly ground for operations. Not a pretty picture.

It is hard to imagine Secretary Rice really meaning what she said on Feb. 15: “I have a difficult time explaining that (Putin) speech. It doesn’t accord with either the world as we see it nor with the character of our interactions with the Russians.”

Unfortunately, the speech was a clear articulation of what Russia is doing around the world. Perhaps that is not the world Secretary Rice sees, but it is visible to almost anyone else.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Russia’s Real Agenda

Douglas Farah of Counterterrorism Blog expands upon Anne Applebaum’s analysis (above) as follows:

Secretary of State Rice seems baffled by Vladimir Putin’s recent speech denouncing the United States in some of the harshest terms possible, as Anne Applebaum eloquently points out in the Washington Post.

But the time for treating Russia like a trustworthy ally in fighting global terror, or having common interests with the United States in Latin America, Africa or Europe has long passed. Only the administration, perhaps still tied by Bush’s peering into Putin’s soul, seems oblivious to what Russia really wants-to reestablish itself as a world power whose interests will often collide directly with the interests of the United States and its allies.

Russia is a sovereign state, and most (with important exceptions) of its clients are also sovereign states, with the right to enter into these international agreements. But it is time to stop pretending Russia’s interests are anything but extremely hostile to combatting Islamist terrorism, stabilizing key regions and ending regional conflicts that pose the real threat of becoming much broader wars.

The first is Russia’s ongoing supply of weapons to Iran and Hezbollah at a time when both are posing direct threats to U.S. interests in several regions, including Iraq and Lebanon. This has been well documented, including senior Israeli officials’ formal protest to Russia over the sale of sophisticated anti-tank weapons that Hezbollah used with great effect in last summer’s war.

This link to Hezbollah, in which Viktor Bout is alleged by U.S. and foreign intelligence officials to be directly involved, has drawn little public comment from U.S. officials.

There are other cases cases much closer to home that have drawn little response from the Bush administration. The Chavez government in Venezuela has spent some $4.3 billion on weapons since 2005, placing it ahead of China ($3.4 billion); Pakistan ($3 billion); and Iran ($1.7 billion), according to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

Most of those weapons come from Russia, including the construction of a Kalashnikov (AK-103) assault rifle factory, combat helicopters, missiles and fighter jets. I recently wrote a paper on it for the International Assessment and Strategy Center.

The sales come as Chavez has gone out of his way to court Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. The two presidents have held at least three face-to-face meetings in the past six months, and address each other as “brother.”

The growing economic ties between the two nations can be seen in the dozens of economic agreements the two leaders have signed in that time, and the mutual support for cutting OPEC’s oil production, which is significant given that the two countries are OPEC’s second and fourth largest oil producers, respectively.

The real impact of Russia’s weapons sales to Venezuela and Iran will be felt in several regions.

Chavez has long had at least tacitly support the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), one of the major drug trafficking organizations in the world. The FARC, when I used to deal with its members in the early 1990s as a Washington Post reporter, retained some vestiges of a true insurrection, whether one agreed with them or not. There was an ideological cohesion.

That has now devolved into an organization with little political agenda beyond making billions of dollars from protecting coca and poppy fields, moving cocaine and heroin and supporting the major cartels. They need weapons, and one can safely assume, I believe, that Chavez’s revolutionary support will extend beyond his own borders.

This risks destabilizing not only Colombia, but the rest of the Andean ridge, from Ecuador through Peru and to Bolivia.

The Chavez-Ahmadinejad axis, with Russian weapons and support, will likely also have a direct impact on supporting the extensive Hezbollah network of money and operatives that flow through Latin America. Iran directly sponsors the group, Russia arms the group and Venezuela offers the friendly ground for operations. Not a pretty picture.

It is hard to imagine Secretary Rice really meaning what she said on Feb. 15: “I have a difficult time explaining that (Putin) speech. It doesn’t accord with either the world as we see it nor with the character of our interactions with the Russians.”

Unfortunately, the speech was a clear articulation of what Russia is doing around the world. Perhaps that is not the world Secretary Rice sees, but it is visible to almost anyone else.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !

Annals of Russophile Gibberish: Simon Jenkins

Writing in the Guardian, rabid Russophile Sir Simon Jenkins (pictured, left, can’t you just feel the hubris oozing out of his pores?) offers the following screed attempting to help KGB spy Vladmir Putin perpetuate his anti-democratic reign in Russia with the help of the West, just like Neville Chamberlain before him. The Guardian doesn’t tell readers a single thing about who Jenkins is, so let LR do so: He’s a contributor to the left-wing Huffington Post, so he’s a hard-core idealogue, and often pontificates at great length on the subjects of architecture and linguistics, so in other words he knows absolutely nothing real about Russia and has apparently never spent any appreciable time there. Despite claiming left-wing allegiance, it’s clear Jenkins is really motiavated by nothing other than partisan hatred of Bush and Blair, since he’s prepared to simply ignore Russia’s massive documented human rights violations as he plants a big sloppy wet kiss right on Vladimir Putin’s butt.

Here’s his crazed diatribe, with LR’s running commentary. LR dares to ask: If the KGB were writing, how would their comments differ from those of Sir Jenkins?

Countries too have feelings. So I am told by a Russian explaining the recent collapse in relations between Vladimir Putin and his one-time western admirers. “We have done well in the past 15 years, yet we get nothing but rebuffs and insults. Russia’s rulers have their pride, you know.”

So that’s it! Litvinenko and Politikovskaya had to perish because we hurt Russia’s feelings! If we hadn’t bruised their ego, they wouldn’t have shut down the TV news, abolished local elections or destroyed opposition political parties. Can you believe this? I mean, can you BELIEVE you see this in print?

The truth is that Putin, like George Bush and Tony Blair, has an urgent date with history. He can plead two terms as president in which he has stabilised, if not deepened, Russian democracy, forced the pace of economic modernisation, suppressed Chechen separatism and yet been remarkably popular. But leaders who dismiss domestic critics crave international opinion, and are unaccustomed to brickbats. Hence Putin’s outburst at the Munich security conference this month, when he announced he would “avoid extra politesse” and speak his mind.

Ah. So when Putin attacked the West, this was “his way” of asking for compliments. And, presumably, sending Mikhail Khodorkovsky to Siberia was “his way” of asking for a hug and a mug of cocoa.

Putin’s apologists ask that he be viewed as victim of an epic miscalculation by the west. Here is a hard man avidly courted at first by Bush, Blair and other western leaders. After 9/11 he tolerated US intervention along his southern border with bases north of Afghanistan. Yet when he had similar trouble in Chechnya, he was roundly abused. When he induced Milosevic to leave Kosovo (which he and not “the bombing” did), he got no thanks. When Putin sought to join Nato in the 1990s he was rebuffed. Then Nato broke its post-cold-war promise and advanced its frontier through the Baltics and Poland to the Black Sea. It is now planning missile defences in Poland and the Czech Republic and is flirting with Ukraine and Georgia. Against whom is this directed, asks Putin.

Putin sought to join NATO in the 1990s? Is this man drunk or simply a liar? Putin didn’t even eve become prime minister until August 1999. Before that he was involved with Russia’s regional government and the KGB, he had nothing to do with NATO discusions. “Tolerated intervention?” Just exactly what was Putin in a position to do to block such action? Chechnya and Afghanistan are similar? Really? How many convictions for human rights violations does NATO have in the European Court of Human Rights for its actions in Afghanistan? NATO broke its promise? Didn’t Russians break their promise not to elect a proud KGB spy as president and starting singing the Soviet national anthem again?

The west grovels before Opec, but when Putin proposes a gas Opec it cries foul. America seizes Iraq’s oil, but when Putin nationalises Russia’s oil that, too, is a foul. Meanwhile, every crook, every murdered Russian, every army scandal is blazoned across the western press. True, Russia is still a klepto-oligarchy that steps back as often as forward, but what of America’s pet Asian democracies, Afghanistan and Iraq?

This guy is completely unhinged. The American government doesn’t receive one single dime of revenue from Iraq’s oil. The Kremlin’s entire budget is based on the oil it has seized. Is he saying the American press isn’t covering the Iraq issue? Has he noticed the recent congressional elections?

In his Munich speech Putin asked why America constantly goes on about its “unipolar world”. Does Washington really seek a second cold war? Russia is withdrawing from Georgia and Moldova. Why is Nato advancing bases in Bulgaria and Romania? The west is handling Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran with the arrogance and ineptitude of 19th-century imperialists. Is it surprising Russia is seeking allies where it can, in China, India, Iran and the Gulf?

Yes, it’s suprising that Russia is selling nuclear technology and weaponry to defend it to Iran, a rogue state despised by the entire world, a clear act of direct provocation against the US, the world’s most powerful country. What’s not surprising is that this LUNATIC isn’t surprised.

At an Anglo-Russian conference in Moscow last weekend I was bemused by the talk of a return to “east-west” confrontation. Diplomats have a habit of listing complaints like marriage counsellors inviting couples to catalogue what most irritates them about each other. The list seems endless, but it surely points to a proper talk rather than a divorce. Don’t they really need each other after all?

Divorce? Has Russia been married to the West? Did LR miss something big? Why doesn’t somebody TELL us these things?

Having visited Russia three times since the demise of the Soviet Union, I remain impressed by its progress. Debate and comment are open. Russia is not squandering its energy wealth but setting $100bn aside in an infrastructure fund. The links between Russia and western business are worth $30bn in inward investment. Cultural and educational contacts are strengthening. Moscow and St Petersburg are booming world cities, their skylines thick with cranes.

Notice how he doesn’t say how long each visit lasted or where he went? Notice how he doesn’t claim Russia is actually spending anything on infrastructure, and doesn’t mention that it is massively expanding its military budget? Notice how he forgets Russia’s wonderful “progress” in decimating its population or increasing the average hourly wage from $1.90 to $2.50 per hour over the course of eight years under Putin?

The west views pluralist democracy as so superior that any state coming to it fresh must surely welcome it with open arms. When there is backsliding, as in former Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Russia and parts of Africa, let alone the Arab world, the west behaves like a peevish car salesman whose client has not obeyed the repair manual. If the west can do fair elections, market capitalism, press freedom and regional secession – after a mere two centuries of trial and error – why can newly free states not do them overnight?

It seems he’s not that impressed with Russians after all. He seems to view them as cave men who can’t be expected to come up to Western standards and therefore shouldn’t be asked. Why does he hate Russians so much?

The tough response to Putin is easy. It is the one he has from Washington and Nato. We won the cold war. You lost. Shut up. If, as Russia’s top general said last week, you want to withdraw from the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty, then withdraw. If you think gas and oil enables you to play the superpower again, see what happens. Bush and Blair may be screwing up “Islamistan”, but their successors will be more canny. Our defence budget is bigger than yours and we have you surrounded.

Actually, it’s the soft response that’s easy. Just give Putin what he wants, like Chamberlain did with Hitler. The tough response is the hard, scary one. This man is a shameless liar.

All this makes for good realpolitik. But what Putin actually said in Munich reflected not belligerence but puzzlement at the aggressive course of western diplomacy. In the old days, he said, “there was an equilibrium and a fear of mutual destruction. In those days one party was afraid to make an extra step without consulting the others. This was certainly a fragile peace and a frightening one, but seen from today it was reliable enough. Today it seems that peace is not so reliable.” Putin is hardly seeking a return to the certainties of the cold war. He has no more interest than the west in stirring the hornet’s nest of Islamic nationalism, stretching as it does deep into Russian territory. His desire for “ever closer union” with Europe and Nato after 1997 was sincere and was surely welcome.

Sure he wants “ever closer union.” Exactly the kind Stalin wanted with Hungary. Why is it that if Americans talk like Putin did at Munich they are maniacs to morons like this ape, but when Putin does it he’s just a misunderstood teddy bear who needs love and tolerance?

While Putin appears to have been conducting his diplomacy over the past decade from weakness and the west from strength, the reverse has been nearer the truth. Britain and America have been led by essentially reactive politicians with no grasp of history. A terrorist outrage or a bombastic speech and they change policy on the hop. When Bush and Blair go, they will leave a world less secure and more divided in its leadership than when they arrived. Their dismissive treatment of Russia’s recovery from cold war defeat has been the rhetoric of natural bullies.

Seems like this lunatic would prefer to be governed by Putin than Blair and Bush. Odd then that he’s made only three trips to Russia. Why not relocate?

Russia and the west have everything to gain from good relations. Putin has struggled to modernise his economy while holding together a traumatised and shrunken Russian federation. The west may feel he errs towards authoritarianism, but second-guessing Russian leaders is seldom a profitable exercise. This is a huge country, rich in natural and human resources. It is hard to think of somewhere the west would be better advised to “hug close”. Instead, Putin will hand his successor an isolated and bruised nation. Under a less confident president, it could retreat into protectionism and alliances the west will hate. To have encouraged that retreat is truly stupid

Putin has NOTHING to gain from good relations with the West. Note that this imbecile doesn’t even try to name ONE thing he has to gain. Enhanced contact with Western values can only serve to undermine Putin’s authority.

Thanks for reading La Russophobe !